E.M. Forster
1 book analyzed
Biography
Edward Morgan Forster (1879–1970) visited India twice — in 1912–13 and again in 1921–22, when he served as private secretary to the Maharajah of Dewas Senior. He had also worked briefly in Egypt during WWI. These experiences gave him a direct knowledge of colonial life and its social mechanics that no amount of research could replicate. He was gay — a fact he concealed publicly throughout most of his life — and his experience of being permanently excluded from the social mainstream gave him a particular sensitivity to the violence of categorization. He began A Passage to India in 1913, abandoned it for a decade, and finished it after his second visit. It was his final published novel — he lived another 46 years but did not publish another, reportedly because the world had changed beyond his power to describe it.